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Giant lobster that sparked bidding war saved from pot

CTV.ca News
Published Sunday, July 20, 2008 8:57PM EDT

Dee-Dee the giant lobster will be avoiding a boiling pot of water and will be sent to a New Brunswick aquarium.

For about a week, Dee-Dee, a 100-year-old 10-kilogram lobster stayed at a Shediac, N.B. fish shop and was the centre of a cross-country bidding war between those who wanted to eat him and those who wanted to set him free.

The store owner, Denis Breau, said he accepted a $1,000 bid from Vancouver resident Laura-Leah Shaw to save the lobster, despite receiving a $5,000 bid from an Ontario group that wanted Dee-Dee for a banquet.

"Some of my regular customers were starting to tell me I should release him in the water," Breau told CTV Atlantic of the reason for his decision.

Dee-Dee will go to a conservation group's aquarium, because releasing him back to the sea would probably be fatal.

The lobster may get to meet his savior in the near-future.

"I would very much like to go out there and meet Dee-Dee and see that he gets taken from the fish shop into what for a lobster would be a better place," Shaw said.

Conservationists hope that Dee-Dee's case sparks enough interest for the creation of a lobster sanctuary in New Brunswick.